Grosse Pointe Professional
by jgormally
Summary: Léon hoped his violent life as a cleaner was behind him. All that changes when the assassin named Martin Blank decides not to kill him after taking his hit. Now, can they both make it out of a deadly trap set by the violent sociopath, Grocer, alive?
1. Chapter 1

Leon opened his eyes and scanned the room. Something was wrong. Something was subtly, slightly off about his small rented hovel. A slight breeze stirred his plant, though he was sure he had closed the window when he turned off the lights for the night.

Without moving, Leon flicked his eyes to the end-table for his pistol… only to see that _it was gone_.

No need to worry; Leon was a professional. He could take on whoever was in the apartment with him without anything so clumsy as a pistol. If the stupid would-be assassin hadn't shot him when he had stolen his gun, then he deserved to be sliced up by Leon.

Turning his head slightly to the left, he noticed the open window the assassin must have entered through. The threadbare curtain puffed in the slight breeze. There was a harsh clicking sound in Leon's ear.

"Don't move." The voice was young, roughened slightly by cigarettes. Leon could smell the faint odor underneath the man's mouthwash. He could smell hair gel and… some kind of cologne. Leon had never had time to bother with niceties like those. Not moving, Leon cleared his throat.

"Are you here to clean me?" he asked in his halting English. There was silence behind him for a few moments. Then the younger man sighed. "It's not me. It's no personal… it's only business. You understand."

Leon nodded. "Yes, I do."

The young man moved in front of Leon. "I heard you were killed a while back; you blew up a good-sized chunk of a building downtown. How did you survive the blast?"

Leon sized the man up. He was about 33 or 34. He had jet-black hair and an expensive silk suit. "What's your name, kid?" He asked softly.

The young hitman hesitated, then shrugged. "Martin Blank."

Leon nodded. "I've heard your name, too. I almost took on your own hit, back when you blew up that dog a few years back."

Blank shook his head. "That was an accident. An expensive accident, but an accident nonetheless. How did you survive?"

Leon shrugged. "I had been shot in the neck. I was pretty sure I was going to die, and then Stansfield, the man who shot me, bent down to look at me. I handed him a grenade pin and while he looked at it, I shot him with a single-shot pistol. The explosion was a cover-up so everyone would think I was dead."

Blank blew out his cheeks, his eyes widening in surprise. "No wonder they never found your body. Everyone assumed you had been disintegrated."

Leon arched his eyebrow. "My English isn't so good."

"Sorry; um, turned to ash."

The two men stared at each other in the dim light. Finally, Leon cleared his throat again. "Well, are you going to do it?"

Blank blinked twice, then shook his head.

"No. No, I'm not. I respected you when I was a kid. You were one of my idols. I'll just tell my boss I never found you."

Blank placed Leon's pistol on the table and walked around behind him to the window.

"My advice? Get out of town, Leon. I could have shot you while you were sleeping. Didn't anyone ever tell you it's dangerous not to keep an eye open at night?"

Leon stiffened for a moment.

"One girl did, once."

Silence.

"Blank?"

He was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Léon sat Indian-style on the roof, the rifle resting over his left forearm, his right hand hanging limply at his side. No sense in wearing it out holding the grip before he had to.

Léon had been active lately; after a three-year period of laying low, he had moved to Chicago. There was no sense in staying 'dead' forever; he was good at killing, not hiding like a frightened mouse. Even if the DEA had any continuing interest in him, Léon knew he was safe in Chicago; it was still a mob town, after all. Besides, the DEA's interest had shifted from Leon in the weeks following his 'death' when it was discovered just how corrupt officer Stansfield had really been.

Also, the midnight visit from Martin Blank had opened Léon's eyes to the fact that he hadn't fooled everyone; enough people knew he still lived to send professionals after him. Léon had made arrangements with Tony (who was deeply hurt that Léon had never revealed himself to be alive) to get out of the city; Tony had sent him west to Chicago under the protection of his uncle, Vic. Vic was a major player in Chicago's crime heirarchy, and promised Léon that he would be safe as long as he kept his head down and did a few odd jobs now and again for the family. Léon had agreed and had moved into a small apartment overlooking a greenhouse.

The greenhouse had been a wreck when Léon had moved in; panes were shattered, the north end of the structure had partially collapsed and there were scorch marks on the metal in places. Within three months, Léon had replaced the panes and fixed the rest of the tiny building as best he could; the greenhouse now held a modest garden and several lilys and ferns. Léon's friends. And as long as he kept doing the jobs, his friends would never be taken away.

Not like before…

Not like the girl.

Léon shook his head to clear away the clinging sorrow that always threatened to overwhelm him when he thought of Mathilda. The quicker he got this job finished, the quicker he could get back to his garden.


	3. Chapter 3

Martin Blank scowled at the folder in front of him.

It wasn't that he had lost his nerve; he had simply lost his taste for this dirty business.

Things had been going great; he and Debi had been hiding south of the border for some time, living off of Martin's considerable fortune.

And that was how Grocer found them.

Grocer. That homicidal, Durozac-popping maniac.

When you smash a man's head in with a TV, it's always best to be professional about it and finish the job with a couple of slugs to the skull; that way there's no chance said man is still breathing.

Martin had slipped up in that respect; he had left the house with Debi and Bart in tow without checking Grocer to make sure he was dead.

All Martin had wanted to do was get away, start a new life with Debi.

Debi… laid to rest in a hasty grave in Puerto Vallarta.

Grocer.

That crazy bastard.

Amazing the man could still shoot, strapped to a wheelchair the way he was now.

If the glint of sunlight off of Grocer's scope had caught Martin's eye a split-second earlier, he could've saved Debi. It would've been him laying in that hastily dug grave right now…

As it was, Grocer's bullet tore through Martin's shoulder and continued through Debi's skull.

Grocer. That… that fuck.

After that, nothing had any flavor for Martin anymore. Life had been gray and empty; it was really only a matter of time before he began taking jobs again.

At first, the old thrill was there again; that old…joy… at taking lives.

That was, of course, until three months ago… until he'd taken the hit for _Il Fantasma_… the Italian Ghost.

He'd caught up with the guy in a rented hovel, watched him for three days before making his move.

He'd still had no clue who the guy was until he told him his name.

Léon.

That had been a rough night. That night, Martin had stared death in its face. If Léon had chosen, Martin would've ended up dead, even though he had taken the man's gun beforehand.

Léon needed nothing so crude as a gun or the element of surprise to take out a would-be assassin. Martin had been damned lucky to walk out of that apartment alive that night, and he knew it.

And now, that old tiredness was back, that old weariness that had assailed him more than a decade ago after watching the sea burn.

Martin Blank was tired.

He closed the file.


	4. Chapter 4

Léon unpacked his briefcase on his small kitchen table, placing one of the two cartons of milk in the fridge and opening the other.

Life had returned to some semblance of normalcy for Léon over the past few months; he took jobs, drank milk, watched old films on a TV (his new boss had bought it and a VHS player for him after Léon had complained of the lack of good theaters in Chicago), cleaned his weapons, and tended to his plants.

His plants.

The greenhouse was filling rapidly with plants; the gardening helped keep Léon's mind off of anything else.

Sighing, Léon turned and walked into the living-room, his cup in his hand.

The first bullet hit the cup, shattering it and spraying the hitman with glass and milk. The second round took a chunk out of the wall where his head had been mere seconds before. Léon rolled away with a grunt, shaking glass shards from his bleeding palm. The wiry assassin pulled his silenced VP70 from its holster with his other hand. _What would Mathilda say if she could see him now?_ He wondered. "_Old, tired, and bleeding again,_ _Léon?"_

Chunks of cheap plaster rained down on Léon as more rounds impacted the wall above his head. The rounds were all coming from… Léon smiled as he noted the would-be assassin's mistake. Gathering himself, Léon rolled away from the window, turning as he did so, and fired 3 shots back through the window, up into the next story of the adjacent apartment building. Two of the shots impacted with the brick wall of the building, spraying brick dust and chunks of mortar down into the alley, but the third went through a darkened window; moments later, a thickset man in a black woolen sweater tumbled forward through the opening, a rifle slipping from his slackening fingers. He fell three stories into the alley and landed with a sickening _THUNK _half in and half out of a garbage dumpster.

Léon exited the first-floor exit a few moments later, his pistol at the ready, but the would-be hitman wasn't moving anytime soon. Léon's bullet had torn most of the right side of his throat open and the man's impact with the dumpster had driven a few snapped-off ribs through his side, the bones glistening wetly white as the man gargled his last few agonized breaths.

Chicago wasn't safe anymore.

And if men were coming after him, that meant only one thing:

Martin Blank had been compromised.


	5. Chapter 5

The blindfold was whipped off of Marcella DuBois' face. She gasped and squinted in the sudden glare, her captors nothing more than blurry shapes in front of the bright light.

Blood from fresh abrasions trickled down the sides of her head, while older blood crusted on her neck and stripped body.

"Why are you doing this?!" she screamed, tears streaking down her tired face, "I already told you, I don't know where he is!"

"Ah, but you used to be his, what was it, secretary? You know his haunts. He's not down south of the border, he's not overseas, he's not in Canada, and he sure as hell didn't go back home."

The man-shape nearest her, the speaker, shifted, letting in more harsh light.

"All you have to do is tell us where Martin Blank is. If you tell us, we'll let you go."

Marcella managed a weary smile through her pain.

"That's bullshit. You wouldn't let me leave here alive."

The shadow shrugged.

"True, but if you tell us, at least we'll put one in your skull and have this mess over with quickly. If not, there are many, many more ways we can hurt you."

Martin Blank's former coordinator lifted her scarred face to look her captor in the face. She could barely make out the glint of spectacles.

"All right; I'll tell you this. I don't know where he went after you assholes killed his girlfriend. I don't know where he is now; what I do know is that, after I'm dead and gone, he'll know, and then he'll come for you. He'll come and you'll die. Blank's got principles."

The shadow-man sighed and lifted his silenced pistol to her head.

Marcella smiled again.

"It won't be quick, either."

Then it was over.


	6. Chapter 6

Léon finished covering the body with trash bags in the dumpster and winced. The old wound in his shoulder was playing up after all that heavy lifting.

The old wound. The bullet wound he had received when _she_ was a part of his life. He remembered that day, remembered it well. He had stumbled home, trying to conceal his trickling wound, the pain coming in agonizing waves. A few blocks from the apartment, Léon had come across The Dress. It was a pretty, girlish thing, floral and light. He had pictured the girl in it and smiled despite his wound.

After buying it, he had continued his slow, painful shuffle home, his pain almost cancelled out by his excitement at the gift.

The girl, however, had barely even looked at him when he entered and had shown no interest in the gift. Léon had shuffled off to the shower to clean himself up, confused and hurt.

Amazing how a 12-year-old girl had been able to break through his defenses so effortlessly when entire teams of SWAT could not. She disarmed him; she was like a daughter, a little sister, a companion, someone to share the day with and make everything a little more bearable. Léon had no illusions; the world was a rotten place, and his work did nothing to improve it. He was everything that was wrong with the world, but then this little girl had walked to his door, looking for hope, for sanctuary; sometimes at night he lie awake, wondering how things might have gone differently if he had just taken the hit on that crooked DEA agent as she had originally asked him. How might things have gone? Would he have three shattered vertebrae in his neck now, where Stansfield's bullet had entered? Would he be alone in this cold city, other hitmen after him?

Mathilda… just the sound of her name was enough to send waves of calming emotion through Léon's soul.

And she _had_ worn The Dress eventually; she had worn it to please him, mistaking her feelings for him for love. Or had she mistaken those feelings? Surely, she had every reason to be infatuated with him; he had saved her life, more than once. He had taken her in, gave her a purpose in her life in the wake of her entire family's murder. Was it so wrong to consider the possibility that she had actually been in love?

Was it so wrong to consider the possibility that some part of him had loved her back? Surely, not in the sense that she loved him; not in the literal physical sense, but on a deep, committed spiritual level, that he had come to love her as deeply as a daughter?

It had been three and a half years since Mathilda had come into his life. She would be almost 16 by now, if she were still alive. Tony had promised Léon that she would continue to be looked after; Léon had no doubts that she would be safe enough if she didn't try anything rash… then again, rashness was one of her flaws.

Léon couldn't help but wonder if she was all right. If hitmen were coming after Léon in Chicago, then that meant either that Martin Blank had given up Léon's location, or that Tony had indeed been knocked off (after years of assuring Léon that such a thing was impossible).

If Tony had been knocked off, then Vic would surely have approached Léon before now to inform him.

Unless Vic was in on this plot to erase Léon…

If Vic did have a hand in this scheme, he would surely know that Léon would attempt to spirit Mathilda away from any danger she might be in.

That made Mathilda, his sweet Mathilda, the bait in this ugly trap.

Time to spring the trap, then.


	7. Chapter 7

Martin peeked over the top of his magazine to scan the passenger car again.

Something was wrong. He had lost contact with Marcella three days ago. When an assassin lost contact with his secretary, that meant one of two things: either she had turned on him or she had been killed.

Marcella would never have turned on Martin; she adored him.

_First Debi, now Marcella. If Grocer's behind this one, I'm going to kill him twice._ Martin thought glumly to himself. He was quite fond of his eccentric secretary, and if nothing else, the thought of having to find another one was…annoying at best.

Could Grocer have been behind this? He had disappeared after shooting Debi down south; Martin had been unable to track him.

_You'd think finding a hitman strapped to a wheelchair wouldn't be too hard._

But it had been hard; Martin had tracked Grocer for three weeks before the trail went cold, and by then, the weariness and depression caused by Debi's death had been weighing him down like an anchor.

Marcella had suggested taking jobs again, offering to become his coordinator again. At first Martin had balked; after all, he had discovered a newfound respect for life in Debi and the life they had together. Now that Debi was gone, murdered, though, that respect for life was quickly draining away.

After the night he had met Léon, though, things had begun to slow down again; jobs lost their allure, and he actually passed up several juicy contracts.

And now Marcella was missing.

Hence the train ride to New Jersey, where their offices had been. Blank always took his own car everywhere; if there _were_ ghouls looking for him, they'd expect him in his car, not taking trains and taxis to the office. Hopefully, the ruse would throw them off.

Correction: The ruse _should_ have thrown them off.

But now, peeking over the magazine for the third time in 15 minutes, Martin looked again at a ghoul sitting not 20 feet away from him in the crowded car. The man had gotten on 10 platforms ago, his Armani suit ill-fitting over a powerful brawler's frame. Martin recognized his face; they had once served together in a Chinese dictator's army, years ago.

The guy noticed Martin looking and tipped a wink at him. Martin cursed softly and rose, walking swiftly to the back of the car and the exit door.

After closing the door behind him, Martin turned and quickly climbed the emergency ladder to the roof of the car. He was almost to the top when the ghoul's hand closed around his ankle. Martin kicked out with his other foot, but the large man was freakishly fast and yanked Martin off of his feet…_and tossed him off of the train!_

Martin pinwheeled through the air, realizing that he had played right into the ghoul's plan, as he had tried to escape just as the train was coming up on a suspension bridge.

He fell 150 feet to the water below.


	8. Chapter 8

The icy water stabbed into Martin's senses, forcing his limbs to curl against his body; he could feel the broken bones in his left arm grating together as he struggled to kick to the surface.

As he breached the surface of the water, he smashed into a rock, snapping a few ribs. Waves of agonizing pain washed over him, spots dancing before his eyes.

The river carried him swiftly along, but he managed to reach out with his good arm and snag an overhanging limb from a tree on the bank. For a moment, the limb creaked alarmingly as if it would snap under his weight, but it held.

_Thank God for small miracles…_ Martin thought to himself as he dragged himself slowly to the rocky bank. Turning over on his back, he gingerly felt his side. _Three broken ribs, maybe four… I've got to get to a hospital, somewhere I can find out how bad it is._

As amazing it was that the fall hadn't killed him, Martin wasn't foolish enough to believe he'd be any more alive if he didn't start moving soon; ghouls usually worked alone, but for someone like him, there were probably multiple killers on his trail. If he didn't get his ass in gear and get going, someone would find him on this riverbank and put a round between his eyes for him.

Martin lurched to his feet, and after securing his broken arm to his side by tearing off his sleeve and fashioning it into a makeshift sling, began his slow and agonizing trek along the rivers' edge.

_Gotta find someone who can help me… these assholes are too organized, too many steps ahead of me. Gotta find… Léon._


	9. Chapter 9

Léon pulled his hat down low over his forehead and scanned the crowd. There didn't seem to be any assassins in the airport, but that meant nothing. An assassin didn't need to actually be in the same room to kill you; Léon knew that one from personal experience.

Everything in his years of killing professionally screamed that this was a bad idea; an airport was a bad place for a killer to be. Better to take trains, private cars, anything but an airplane.

Back when he worked for Vic, Léon had had a target, a man with the Japanese Yakuza. The man had come to New York on business for his mob and had killed some important people. Drug traffickers, to be sure, scum, but Vic wanted a message sent.

When the Japanese man had arrived at the airport to go back home, Léon had casually slipped a bomb into his briefcase after it had gone through security and then left the airport.

The explosion of the private plane on the tarmac was all over the news for weeks; Léon had had to move…

Léon had moved into the apartment building where _she_ lived with her family.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Léon reminded himself that he was being too paranoid; whoever was behind this obviously wanted Léon dead, but not seriously enough to take out a big name against him. No, it was more likely that he was being manipulated into some sort of confrontation or trap… so taking a plane was relatively safe.

Relatively.

Nothing was absolute in this dangerous little game.

Léon scanned the crowd again as he waited for his flight to be called.


	10. Chapter 10

The plane accelerated smoothly and left the ground. Léon relaxed a bit and checked the aisle. Right after he had gotten seated, a couple of government-types had boarded and seated themselves flanking him; one to the rear, three rows back, and one to the side, across the aisle in the window seat. .45s, usually forbidden on flights even for feds, bulged at their waists, their cheap off-the-rack suits hastily covering them as they sat.

Léon fought a small grin; two feds? That was all? He could have taken them both out during the flight without anyone even noticing if he wanted to. Instead, he relaxed against the seat. Whatever this was, it was all part of the plan, obviously. Even though the flight would only last about an hour, a movie was starting; Léon watched to keep himself from killing the spooks.

--

Martin finished binding his ribs in the truck stop bathroom and set about fashioning a splint for his shattered forearm. Wincing at the excruciating pain, he finished tying off the splint and gingerly tested his shoulder. Good; he had at first thought the entire arm was done for, but his shoulder had merely been popped out of its socket when he slammed into the rock. Putting it back in place was painful, but necessary; a dislocated limb was a dangerous thing; blood could pool in the hollow from a severed artery and could later poison you.

With a shaking hand, Martin flattened the cheap map out on the faucet. _Illinois. Great. I've only come one state east._

_If they know that I'm headed to New Jersey… then I have to go somewhere else. Obviously, Marcella is dead; that's something I'm gonna have to deal with later. Right now, I've got to get my own ass out of the path they think I'm taking. Go somewhere different. Maybe… _He traced his grubby finger along the map east.

_Boston. I can work with that._

After folding up the map and throwing his ruined clothes in the trash, Martin left the bathroom, clad in new jeans, a flannel shirt, workboots and a trucker hat.

--

The flight landed at JFK a little after three; within ten minutes, Léon stepped out of a bathroom stall wearing one of the suits of the unlucky Fed who had actually tried following him through the crowd. His lanky arms and legs were too long for the suit, and it rode up in the crotch unmercifully, but it was a disguise, at least. Plus, it never hurt to have the comforting weight of a gun riding on your hip.

The grizzled cleaner stepped out onto the sidewalk and hailed a cab. Little Italy was waiting.


End file.
